To be fair, I have not used Trusted in a deck yet. I think it might be worth writing a review for why I don't normally consider it good option, though.
I like the idea of Upgrade cards in theory. They are cards that are supposed to make your other key cards better, and I think normally that's pretty good. Of course, that does mean that you need cards to work well with them as they are not much use on their own.

The cards that work well with Trusted are Ally cards that normally have abilities that cause them to take damage or horror as part of the activation cost or have a ability that is triggered by taking damage or horror. Some examples would be:

If you play Trusted on one of these cards, you normally get one more use out of their ability, which can be pretty nice. Anything that adds value to these cards is a good thing in my opinion.

On their own, the extra points of soak are handy to have. In-faction, Guardian cards don't normally need a lot of extra health soak, but most will welcome the horror soak.

The reason I don't normally pick this card is because I feel like it has anti-synergy with Calling in Favors. Calling in Favors is the other card you want to run if you have a lot of Ally assets, but if you target an Ally that has the Trusted Upgrade on it, you lose the Upgrade and it gets discarded when the Ally goes back to your hand. When you take into consideration that both cards cost 1 resource, I personally normally just run Calling in Favors instead, since it returns the Ally card to your hand (effectively healing it) and also lets you search for your other useful allies. Trusted is nice to have, but I don't think it's effective right now to run it in addition to Calling in Favors.

That doesn’t make sense. You play trusted to get more use out of guard dog or beat cop but
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Django
· 25629/15/18

Are too scared to discard it with favors? Trusted served it’s purpose once the ally reached it’s stam/ San Limit so playing favors at this point or having the ally die as soak is very effective. But i don’t think trusted is really worth the deck slot.
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Django
· 25629/15/18

I guess my point is you can run both Calling In Favors and Trusted, but if you do both, you need to wait until an ally is close to defeat before you can use Calling In Favors on them without losing the utility of Trusted. For example, if I want to use Calling In Favors on Guard Dog to get Beat Cop, I might not wait for it to be worn all the way down before doing so normally. With Trusted on Guard Dog, I'd be tempted to wait to get use out of it. Granted, Trusted is fast, so you can wait to play it until you need it, but it has a "play on your turn" restriction that means you can't use it to soak damage/horror during the encounter phase unless you play it in advance. It's not a completely deal-breaking anti-synergy between the two cards, but it's just a little awkward.
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ArkhamInvestigator
· 2129/15/18

Actually, trusted makes Calling in favors even better. You can dump extra damage / get extra triggers with the ally, its that much more recilient, thus when you finally get the Favors you can play it on the still-living ally.
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Tsuruki23
· 10249/17/18

I like this card, 1 resource for 1 extra health and sanity, that's a fantastic conversion of resources.

Sadly, liking cards isn't the same as them being good.
First off, Dodge exists, a card that costs the same amount of resources and is very likely to net you the same amount of damage sustained or more. Take for example the core set campaign, Dodge immediately has superior payoff if you save it for the confrontation with Ghoul Priest, not every scenario has such a good example but most will present you with some route to preventing 2+ points of horror/damage.

Perhaps the most important benefit in Trusted's favor is that it also protects against treacheries, but that strength is moot against the fact that it has the added clause of needing an ally target, not to mention that allies might not stick around long enough for you play Trusted on them in the first place while Dodge is fast.

Should you play Trusted? Yes, try it. Keep in mind however that it should only be played in an ally heavy deck with more ally-support cards like Charisma, Inspiring Presence and especially Calling in Favors, it happens that Trusted helps your allies stick around and those other cards all depend on allies sticking around until you get an opportunity to heal them, swap them around or fill your board with them.

As has been noted below, it gives many allies an extra use. This is definitely helpful. Of course, then there's also the more obvious utility: 1 extra point of horror and/or damage that you don't have to take.

In some ways, Dodge is better. It costs 1 resources and 1 card, no action. Dodge can let you avoid more damage. Odds are you're more likely to only take advantage of either the 1 extra sanity or health with Trusted, but not both. Dodge let's you avoid a whole attack which can be much more damage.

On the other hand, Dodge only works on enemies, not treacheries. Trusted lets you store damage away from your investigator. In addition, it can make scenario allies more hearty if the scenario tries to kill them (think Adam Lynch.)

Second Wind has a different cost than Trusted: +1 action but -1 card (because you draw to replace it.) It can heal more but it has a very limited play window for best effect. This card is best suited to investigators that take damage regardless of the allies they have. Mark Harrigan and Sophie, I'm looking at you.

This card is well costed and serves a useful niche. It's not bad. It's not game breaking. I'd recommend Trusted in decks that have 6 or more allies. Maybe 4 or more if you include Calling in Favors or if your allies run very useful abilities with a self-damage component, like Aquinnah or Beat Cop.

This is one of those 'really good for one investigator, meh for everyone else' kinds of cards. And this time it's Pete that wins. Because his base health and sanity is split between him and Duke, this is essentially a boost for Pete while increasing the number of hits Duke can take.

I play a decent amount of Pete/Duke decks, and I haven't been tempted by this card. Between Inspiring Presence (for healing Duke, and extra Duke use per turn), Vicious Blow (for a little damage boost), and No Stone Unturned (to dig up a Dark Horse, if needed), I'd be hard pressed to include this card.
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cb42
· 2311/7/18

I’ve run this in Pete decks and not found it terribly impressive. Certainly duke makes it much more reliable as a heal, and as far as healing goes, the easy comparison is First Aid - which costs 1 more resource and 4 more actions to heal 3 instead of 2 (also more flexibly). Really, I think this card is more valuable on allies who use their health/sanity for effect (primarily Guard Dog, Beat Cop 2, and Aquinnah) where this card reads more like: cost 1, fast, deal 1 damage to an enemy and heal 1 Horror - which is a pretty solid card effect!
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Death by Chocolate
· 1311/8/18

I don't understand the logic here at all. Why is it so important for Pete to increase Duke's health and sanity? If Pete is worried about his durability, he has a huge number of strong in-faction options like Cherished Keepsake, Leather Coat, Peter Sylvester, etc.
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CaiusDrewart
· 175111/8/18

@CaiusDrewart If you’re running Dark Horse Pete, you likely would prefer to run Madame than the boyfriend, Cherished Keepsake conflicts with Rabbit’s Foot, and well, there’s no good argument against Leather Coat beyond the matter than Dark Horse Pete would rather spend a single resource than a single action to buffer two points. I’m not convinced Trusted is the best choice, but I think their are viable reasons to include it.
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Death by Chocolate
· 1311/9/18

Not only does this not cost an action, but if you're running a Survival Knife deck, this can actually GIVE you an action. Say, for instance, you have any ally who is at currently at 1/1, and you are facing two enemies that do 1 damage/horror. With this and survival knife, you can spend 2 full actions doing something besides fighting these stupid rats. It's very worth it in a S-Knife deck.
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crymoricus
· 1951/5/19

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